"NEWARK — Seven people, most of them employees of the VA New Jersey Health Care System, are facing federal charges that they sold crack cocaine or heroin to veterans seeking treatment at the Lyons VA facility in Bernards and one other location during the last 15 months.

State officials and others expressed shock Tuesday.

Affraz Mohammed did not.

'You see them (sellers of illegal drugs) just waiting there,' the Springfield resident and U.S. Marine Corps veteran said, describing his experiences receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments at the Lyons VA during recent years — most recently just two months ago.

'These are people who want to get numb,' Mohammed said of some fellow patients. 'You know this man or that man is a vet, is service-connected, and he needs his fix, his medicine — and at the end of the day, they just make it easy for them.'"

Well, what would you expect, since it takes up to 90- or even 120-days to have an appointment with a psychiatrist in mental health.

After I had a surgery done at a VA Hospital, I had to pay the nurses to come in and drain my catheter bag, to give me my pain meds, to bring my food in. Now I can see that I missed out on getting some real pain relief.

Ah, right. I was probably hallucinating all of that. I was probably also hallucinating when the nurses would stop by and stabbed me in the surgical site with their forks, then saying, "Start doing situps, right now! This ain't no civilian hospital, you know!"

It had to be hallucinations, because the nurses were Filipinas, and they couldn't speak english.

At least I have figured out why breakfast, lunch and dinner was always those tasty dead chicks in the eggs treats.